majorlance

Thanks for the great advice! I don't want to do it myself and I like the functionality you mention. I'll post back here once I make some progress on this...

That's my sense. Pro space systems work well overall with the trade-off of a little flexibility. For the use cases I described, would you lean toward Lutron or Control4? Thanks!

I've been using an ISY 994 and recently upgraded to an eisy for over 15 years with all switches/outlets using Insteon. Just upgraded to the eisy and use Home Assistant to link it to Apple Home. The configuration has been rock-solid for the last month since I installed the eisy (I think my 15 year old 994 was starting to fail after many years of faithful, just forget about it service...). However, we're building a new house from the ground up and I need to choose an underlying automation platform. I also don't want to invest in Insteon given the roller coaster over the last couple of years. My setup is not that complex but I want to use an installer to do the work and initial setup. As expected, they are pushing Control4, Lutron, private CCTV systems, etc. I guess I'm reluctant to tackle the job with a bunch of pieces and parts using zwave or zigbe. (I have my battle scars from the X10 days...) My use cases are pretty basic from an automation perspective - basically the simple things I can do with eisy. Turn on the lights at dusk, off at a set hour, gang certain lights for control from a keypad. Activate a light based on a sensor like motion or door, open/close the shades, ceiling fan as a group or when certain events or lights turn on/off. I really like the Apple Home interface and have linked my garage door, thermostats to it in addition to the eisy through Home Assistant. We probably have 30 switches that need to be automated, eight shades, a much of lamps and a handful of sensors. I use Sonos for audio and Apple TV/apps for TV viewing and don't see the need to link them to the lights, etc. Although I understand that the installer business model is to skip prosumer products or DYI stuff, I'm a little reluctant to step into a walled garden in terms of home automation. Any thoughts or comments? Many thanks... Lee

Thanks very much! I'll take a look.

Any other details on how to connect Home Assistant to Ring Alarm?

Thanks. I'm using the Ring Node Server with their cameras. Nice substitute for a motion sensor... However the alarm would also be helpful. Specifically, triggering events based on door openings, or motion in an interior room (with the ring motion sensor, not camera). Here's hoping it will be expanded.

Thanks!

Any update on this? It would really be nice to have Ring Alarm devices trigger ISY events.

I no longer use ELK and would like to remove it from my console... I can't see a way to do this but it must be something simple I'm missing. Advice?

I've found that the Echo is very picky regarding my wifi connection. Seems to require a strong signal to the degree that I actually had to change the location of one of my wireless access points. It sounds like your issue #2 is a hardware problem but that's just a guess. Here's a link from CNET for trouble shooting... https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-fix-connectivity-issues-with-the-amazon-echo/ Good luck.

Wow! Best of both worlds (or two ISY's in this case ). Thanks! Lee

Michel, Agreed. And the Ecobee's have very limited functionality when it comes to the Echo. We have unlimited flexibility with an ISY. It may not be practical or possible to take the same approach... just an idea. Again, for me at least, having the Echo see one list of scenes, program, devices, etc. (even if there are multiple ISY devices) feels like it would simplify things. Every time I add my second ISY (again thanks for the help in getting my account straightened out), the Echo recognizes the programs I've setup when I do a discovery but then tells me she can't find them with I ask to turn something on or off. I need to do more trouble shooting. Lee

Michel helped me sort some things with the Portal to get two ISY's (I also have two homes) registered. It's been a bear with (most likely) some of it me and some of it the Portal. At this point, I've given up on trying to get the second one to work with my beach house and the Echo I have there. There's no way my wife will put up with switching ISY's or random performance issues. I also use Ecobee thermostats in both houses and both Echo's see the Thermostats and can be controlled from either house. This is nice. I wish the ISY portal worked this way. I'd like to be able to use one Alexa app and Amazon account and have it recognize all of the commands on any number of ISY devices. I can name the ISY programs or scenes (such as Beach Outside Lights) to be unique and represent where they are. This would be very clean. My two cents... Lee

By dropping one of the ISY's I was able to re-link my programs and have them execute consistently. I'm happy to do the work to move to 5.x but was waiting for the final stable release if that is what is required to be able to support two ISY's in the portal. I have an Echo and a Dot at my main house, along with one ISY, and everything worked fine through the portal. Adding the Second ISY seemed to have gummed things up. What I have learned (please anyone help and confirm): 1) You can only have one Amazon account tied to the ISY portal 2) My challenge is adding a second ISY. Even thought I'm only using programs with unique names between the two homes, it seems to be mixed up as to how to execute a command through the Echo with two ISY's on the ISY Portal. Any help or further clarification would be greatly appreciated. Lee

Hmmm. I'm running 4.4.x, not 5. so that may be the problem. But I'm seeing very inconsistent flaky behavior out of the setup. Can one of the admins comment on my setup? Thanks, Lee

My problem is simple yet I can't find a direct answer in the forums... although I know it must be "right there" I can only find fragments to the answer. I have two house and, of course, two ISY's. The ISY's have been setup to control some of the basic's of each house, lights, sonos audio, thermostats, etc. and each is independent o the the other. I have the ISY portal and purchased an Amazon Echo for one and a Dot for the other. Added these to the ISY portal and that's where my challenges emerged. When I had only one house linked to he Amazon echo everything worked well. My ISY Programs would execute with the appropriate syntax and (in spite to the difficulty of linking an older Russound and Sonos system together), we were all all one happy family. In one house... The challenge I have is in adding a second home with an entirely unique set of commands to the ISY portal with a second ISY. I'm perfectly fine with having a second set of local commands at one house vs. the other to do a similar task (and even write these up as a cheat sheet for my wife and guests. But the second ISY is not recognized by the ISY portal and ignores my tries to link the ISY to the Echo vocabulary. In the ISY portal it shows both the ISY hubs and I can add a program to the spoken list. But when I attempt to use the ALEXA app to discover the new commands it doesn't see them. Without going into to many arcane details, how do I simply create two households with an ISY in each of them, controlled by an Amazon Echo, one in each house? I don't care about shared command,etc. I just want each house to work with the commands that I have programmed for that home... Any advice is appreciated! Lee

Newbie question- what does multi-channel support mean?

Final report- the GC-100 did the trick. Odd thing was/is, I changed the port address (I had left the static IP the same after removing my old Startech and adding the new GC-100) to the default 4999 used on the GC-100. I continued to received Device Not Responding errors. I then changed the port to 5000 (which is the second serial port on the GC-100) and I didn't receive any errors. Switched the port back to 4999 and the Russound CAV 6.6 responded and I received no Device not responding errors. I'm not certain why I saw this behavior (feels like an ISY issue) but all is well now! I did write a spreadsheet that will calculate the checksums for the various CAV commands and format the hex commands to decimal, separated but colons (as the ISY requires). Which helped to greatly simplify adding additional commands (like favorite 1, favorite 2, source input, number 0 - 9, input, etc.). My thanks to those before me that took the time to document their approach! My next steps are to write the programs and then link the Russound to the Amazon Echo we have via the ISY. Finally, I want to link my Sonos system. Although the Russound CAV 6.6 is old and has since been replaced by Russound, I do wish there was a module (link the ELK M1 Gold solution) for the Sonos available for purchase from ISY. Using Security Spy, etc. to discover and add the appropriate commands looks laborious... Cheers! Lee

Thanks! The new GC-100 comes in tomorrow and I'll report back.

A little more experimentation... I am getting a failure to connect when I issue the second command. I've just ordered a GC-100 and will substitute it for the Startech. My current thought is that the Startech may be the issue... But I'm not certain what parameter on it should be changed. It's odd that it accepts the first command (or two commands if they are in one network resource) but if I send one, then the next, it chokes.

This is pretty frustrating... I tried turning on flow control with Xon/Xoff and then none. Didn't make a difference. Are there any whole house audio systems whose control is less kludgy and more reliable than my CAV 6.6? I also have a couple of Sonos in my house but the setup for these looked more cumbersome using Security Spy, etc. My wife keeps turning on the Amazon Echo to play Pandora and it's playing through this tiny speaker... Not that it's that hard to turn on our whole house system but it's frustrating that I can't take advantage of the new Echo to ISY integration to basically play a little music. (I have the lights working properly through the Echo integration - love it.) Any help is appreciated... Lee

Just checked a simple script. I can turn on and off the family room zone. I can turn on and then off the kitchen zone. I then created a program that turns on the family room and then turns on the kitchen. The first item in the program (family room) will turn on but not the kitchen. Re-ordered them and the kitchen (now first) turns on but not the family room. I'm stumped...

I'll check it again tonight to see if I can identify a pattern. So far, sending it multiple on commands for different zones, or sending an on command and then a "play favorite F1" from a program (executing the then portion of the program from the right click) fail. I even tried inserting a wait 5 seconds command between actions in the programming statement didn't make a difference. Lee

I just received my ISY and successfully set it up and the networking module. I am controlling a CAV 6.6 using a StarTech.com 1-Port RS232 Serial over IP Ethernet Device Server. I have it setup per the instructions in the wiki and can get the ISY to successfully issue an On or Off command for any of the zones. (I also figured out how to send other commands and developed a spreadsheet to compute the checksums). Any one command works when I send it, including the basic on or off zone command. However, when I try to submit multiple commands to the Russound (such as turn on zone 1, turn on zone 2, turn on zone 3), only the first command is completed. I have to wait a minute or so (or make a change on the keypad such as turning up the volume) before I can issue any other command, including a single command like on or off. Does anyone have any ideas or solutions for this issue? It's got me stumped. Best- Lee

Tried it again and dropped my IR device purchase. Portal purchase worked.. and is now linked. Echo arriving in in 10 days or less. Lee